We started out late because I carry the Cluff Curse which overpowers the Lanyon Luck. Cluffs always start late on trips, and even though I got up earlier to get things ready, getting 4 adults, 1 teen, and 4 small children out the door on time is no small task! Needless to say, we got out of the house kind of late and then got stuck in London traffic...everyone was trying to get away for the weekend since it was beautiful weather. We were headed to Stonehenge to be touristy. On our way, while stuck on a small country road in traffic that found it too difficult to merge properly from 2 lanes down to 1, we unfortunately caught sight of a guy running down the road, only to veer off into the bushes, no doubt to relieve himself. A couple seconds later, a second man joined him. We gave them the benefit of the doubt and decided they both just wanted to use the same bush. As we drove past, we had the misfortune to witness more of his business than we had wanted to, but fortunately we only saw one guy. Couldn't he have ducked off the road a little more? I mean, come on! No shame.
You can see Stonehenge from the road, and as we approached it, cresting on the hill, we saw that there were a ton of people viewing it. Bad day to go, I guess, because it was just a day or so from the first day of autumn. Each solstice and equinox, people (called Druids) come in droves to worship, or something, at the site. There were lots of motorhomes off in the distance with people camping out, getting ready for the event. A guy dressed up in flowing white clothes (who apparently believes he's an ancient king) had protest signs up trying to "Free Stonehenge" from it's current imprisonment.
Here's what Stonehenge looks like now...
and here's how it looked when it was built.
We wore our London shirts so we could get our cheesy matching picture at a touristy site. You gotta love it! Mission accomplished.
Hyrum and Dakota played with the kids, tossing them around.
The girls had fun looking at the sheep, and no, the electric fence isn't as close to them as the picture makes it look (luckily a rope held them back).
Tilly's all about posing for the camera recently. I think she just got sick of looking at the lens and saying "cheese!".
Daisha's husband,our photographer and native tour guide, Edward. He cut his own hair! I'm impressed.
After Stonehenge, we headed off to Bath, the place with Roman baths that people would go to when ailing. It was a beautiful town with great architecture. The whole city is made with the same type of stone, so all the buildings have the same pale cream color.
I LOVE the vines growing all over the buildings in England. This in Virginia Creeper, and I want to find some to climb all over my lame-o looking apartment. It turns from green to red in autumn.
It took some searching, a tour bus about plowing us over, and getting separated (we were all in two cars...a girl car and a boy car) to find a place to park. We got out and started a walking tour of the city, but we got distracted by all the hot air balloons taking off, and Dakota and Hyrum decided to wrestle until they came away with knots in their arms and stained pants. Sorry about the grass stains, Daisha.
We took pictures of the famous royal Crescent, which is a crescent shaped row of housing, not just one mansion. I can't imagine what it must be like living there, and having your house be in thousands of tourist photos.
We walked over the Pulteney Bridge, which has shops lining each side of the bridge as you walk over it.
I talked about the litter problem in England, right? That's their major flaw...too many litterbugs. I was disgusted to find that even in a beautiful park, in a gorgeous city, the litter was still everywhere.
We found the roman baths, though they were closed.
I told the kids to stick their fingers in this wall, but that something might eat their fingers. They didn't fall for it.
We found a traveling pig art display that was currently set up there. Someone told us there were 100 pigs throughout the town, so we walked Bath looking for pigs to take pictures with. We only found about 20 before it started getting late and we had to head off to our hotel in the Cotswolds.
I have no idea why this last picture keeps uploading sideways, but it won't do it any different. Sorry about the head tilt.
We also found the Jane Austen center. Unfortunately, it was closed. Jane Austen visited Bath often, and if you don't know who she is, I'm amashed, because she's an amazing author. Go check out Pride and Prejudice RIGHT NOW!
We walked down Gay Street to get back to our car.
The funniest thing about Bath was the "no fly tipping" sign. I could imagine people going around trying to flick flies over like they push cows over. Just so you know, that sign means no dumping household garbage in the public garbage cans.
We got in our car and headed off to the hotel. Talea is such a great big sister. I don't know how I'd manage without her! She always takes care of the kids in the back and holds Kiersa's bottle for me. She's the best little, I mean big, girl! Tabitha was a sweetheart to let Talea use her new booster so we didn't have to bring ours out.
We left Bath in search of our hotel, and ended up at the Travelodge in Cheltenham. We ate dinner at their wanna-be pub, which was interesting, because we got to see what Daisha meant about English servers offering cruddy service compared to the ones in America. Hyrum ordered a steak, and they had no idea what steak sauce was. We tried to describe what it was, so they brought him a variety of strange saucy things that they thought might be as close as they could get. Luckily, the steak was good enough on its own. I got some salad from the salad bar, and reaffirmed what Daisha warned, that the English don't know how to do salads. You get about 4 choices of stuff for your salad, all of which are strange except for croutons, and again, no ranch dressing. How is this not heard of over here? Do they not like it? How is that possible?
It's funny that no matter where we all try to eat at, they can rarely accommodate a party of our size. They always try to separate us until we find our own tables that will work. After dinner, we went back to our rooms and fell asleep instead of risking our morals by watching TV. After 9pm, or maybe it's 10, anything goes on TV, so you'll see a lot of naughty stuff you're not expecting to view. The kids slept on a couch with a trundle, which I loved, because I could put Kiersa on the trundle instead of just blankets on the floor. My favorite thing about this hotel was that all the bedding, including the duvet, was bright white, so you know they're not masking nasty mystery stains. For the first time ever, I felt like I could lay on the comforter without the risk of contracting some freaky disease. Why don't ALL hotels do this?!
2 comments:
We've been to a couple of hotels in the US that do the white duvet thing - I think they were in NYC. So chic!
Love the matching shirts!
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